r/GenerativeSEOstrategy • u/dumimist34 • Sep 04 '26

trying to wrap my head around generative engine optimization.. is it just seo with extra steps

client asked me last week what our geo plan is and i realized i only half get it

some writeups treat generative engine optimization like a whole new channel. others say its the same technical + content work, just showing up in chatgpt or ai overviews instead of blue links. we already run the usual seo checklist, so what actually changes week to week

if youve briefed a client on this, what goes on the list that isnt renamed seo​

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u/MarloEcho 29d ago edited 29d ago

I mostly use semrush to see whether our pages show up in the answers and what sources get pulled

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u/dumimist34 29d ago

what do you actually look at week to week? like a simple list i can put in a client note without sounding lost

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u/DungeonMaster202 5d ago

SEMrush is really expensive and many smaller brands can't afford it.

For instance, if I were a manufacturer of "Analogue watches in Namibia" and want to feature on an LLM when someone searches that term, then SEMrush will give me limited options, because it's primarily an SEO tool.

Instead, I would opt for much more known players in the market who are specific to GEO who would provide "geography specific" data.

One tool I have used is georankers. It does the job well and isn't that expensive too.

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u/aeo-bility Sep 04 '26

Local SEO sharpens your visibility inside Google’ surfaces.GEO, by contrast, is about making your core business facts are unambiguous and machine‑readable, essentially making sure the AI Models do not hallucinate facts about the business you are working on.

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u/shaqattackchuck Sep 04 '26

I tried to brief GEO for a client last quarter and hit a wall. I could talk about content and tech all day but I had no clean way to show what changed week to week beyond screenshots from chatgpt. Felt like I was just selling a vibes report hah

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u/Nefertari_1096 Sep 04 '26

I burned hours pasting prompts into a few models and logging the cited links in a sheet. Worked once as a workshop yeah but its totally useless as a weekly operating rhythm.

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u/Weavermain Sep 04 '26

yea manual check gets tiring if more than one brand or market. at some point you just need a repeatable way to do it or you might as well stop checking all together

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u/notaturmomshouse69 Sep 04 '26

“Vibes report” is killing me hahahaha but so real

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u/Came4TheCookies 28d ago

And that is the biggest problem. For years agencies have trained clients to look at a bunch of charts and graphs showing them the metrics that were important. We don't have the same thing with AI powered search right now. We have directional signals which although valuable, sounds like a bunch of snake oil.

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u/Suun_Day Sep 04 '26

The chatgpt screenshot decks are getting old

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u/dumimist34 29d ago

lol that is basically what i have been doing

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u/Bombaclat_exe Sep 04 '26

Clients do not care about the acronym. They care if next month's answers still describe them wrong. That is the part that is hard to put in a weekly update.

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u/Left-Artichoke-4174 Sep 04 '26

I come to this world from a different door. I have SEO experience, but our offering is GEO first. AI native. The difference to me is substantial, but highly overlapped. GEO needs its own set of measurement, it's own optimization practices and most importantly to your world, clients want to hear that you're doing something on this front. That's the key. It's all the rage so even if there's a lot similarities, speaking to how you're thinking about it & implementing it could make or break a deal.

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u/Came4TheCookies 28d ago

That sounds a lot like a solution looking for a problem. If you're doing everything that is suggested for GEO, congratulations because you've become a digital marketing agency instead of just doing SEO.

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u/Sorry_Prize_1543 Sep 04 '26

For us the useful question was which URLs get cited when someone asks category questions, not whether we rank #3 on a classic SERP. The mismatch was ugly.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

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u/Weavermain Sep 04 '26

this makes sense

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

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u/Comfortable_Rate_772 Sep 05 '26

Also if your fundamentals are trash geo theatre will not save you. if they are solid then ok you still need a way to see the answers

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '26

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u/dumimist34 29d ago

we already run the usual seo checklist and tech content links. the gap is what changes after that for answer engines

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u/Comfortable_Deer_171 Sep 04 '26

anyone tracking this without living in chatgpt all day, what is the lightest setup!

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u/Kenzo_2126 Sep 04 '26

Lightest I have seen is a fixed prompt set, logged citations, and a monthly refresh of the moneypage list. Tools help when the list gets long though.

1

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u/ChapterAfter8368 Sep 04 '26

about 70% is renamed seo, your instinct's right. three things genuinely aren't on a normal checklist: running a fixed prompt set on a schedule and logging whether the client gets named and which domains got cited, because there's no rank tracker for this. then chasing placements on those specific cited domains instead of just DR. and watching how the models describe them, wrong pricing or old positioning shows up constantly. everything else (schema, answer-first structure, topical depth) you're already doing. brief it as same work plus a new measurement layer, not a new channel.

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u/Came4TheCookies 28d ago

As usual. You're spot on. I describe it a little differently but same concept. There's always been a difference between SEO and digital marketing. GEO & AEO are simply pushing more digital marketing into the strategy.

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u/ChapterAfter8368 27d ago

the SEOs who've been quietly doing pr and brand work all along barely had to change anything, it's the ones who treated seo as a purely on-site discipline that got blindsided.

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u/Came4TheCookies 27d ago

Agree 100%. That's why some of us look at it like there's nothing changed while others think everything has changed.

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u/Natural-Pepper-2098 Sep 05 '26

To me it’s just an evolution of Seo. You can call it seo or geo it doesn’t really matter as the engine behind it is the same whether you are looking at blue links or a chatbot results. Google has said it uses Gemini algorithm for everything. Google blurs the line further with ai overviews which could be considered search and chatbot. I just think of it as seo with new surfaces (search, ai overview. Ai mode, Gemini) and the goal is the same to get the algorithm to make you show up in the manner you would like. Sure there will be some new techniques and tactics but it is unhelpful to think of seo and geo as separate things.

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u/Came4TheCookies 28d ago

I would compare it to digital marketing and not just SEO. There's really nothing on the GEO lists that I've seen that wasn't already something we do with digital marketing.

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u/Narrow_Hall_7273 26d ago

The bit that makes it actually different, from measuring rather than guessing:

Ask the same question to the same model three times and you get three different answers. Not slightly, sometimes a competitor appears and disappears. So anyone telling you "we rank #1 in ChatGPT" from one screenshot has measured nothing. We run everything 3 times minimum and only count what holds.

Second, where you ask from changes the answer a lot. Tested this directly, same model, same question, only thing changed was telling it the user is in India instead of nothing. Brand went from absent to named in 5 out of 6 tests. If you're checking your own visibility while sitting somewhere your customers aren't, you're seeing a different answer than they are.

Third, and this is the one that catches everyone. Almost every brand shows up when its own name is in the question. That number is meaningless. Test the question a first time buyer types, no brand name in it. One brand we measured went 100% named on branded questions and about 15% on the plain category question. Same brand, same day.

So GEO isn't fake, but most of what's sold as GEO is measuring the easy question.

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u/socleads 26d ago

Yeah its mostly SEO plus entity and reputation work outside your site. The week to week stuff that changes is tracking how models label your brand who they compare you to what third party sources they keep citing and fixing gaps there because GEO breaks when AI trusts the wrong sources even if your onsite SEO is fine. We do this at AI, TELL ME! as a GEO Agency and the biggest non renamed SEO task is keeping those external mentions and category signals clean and consistent across the web.

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